It’s my birthday today! I’m officially 29 years old, and I’m writing this in the Press Room at VidCon, the biggest annual YouTube convention. Growing up, VidCon was a millennial/Gen Z cultural juggernaut. Founded by John and Hank Green in 2010, it was one of the first places where fans and social media stars could meet and interact. Sixteen years later, it has turned into something else entirely.

That difference was personified by a panel on Thursday called “F***ups, Fixes, and Lessons Learned,” starring a former A-list YouTuber who fell from grace in 2022 after he was caught cheating on his wife with a producer who worked for his YouTube channel. That was bad enough, but it didn’t help that his brand was “Wife Guy” and family man. Of course, I’m talking about Ned Fulmer from the Try Guys.

Fulmer’s panel was absolutely packed on Thursday, and I was sitting in between a bunch of different commentary creators, many of whom had covered the scandal and fallout on their own platforms. And when I posted about the panel on my Instagram Story, a bunch of you were extremely eager to hear what Fulmer had to say. This is indicative of how YouTube drama has cannibalized the whole industry, a shift that started in the late 2010s and feels complete as of today.

The reason why is obvious: drama is captivating. I was locked into Fulmer’s faux-apology panel, and I’ll break down how the “cancelled” YouTuber arc has become something of a grift in itself. The number of AI vendors, MrBeast mentions, and alt-right tech platforms present at VidCon this year also says a lot about the life cycle of a YouTube convention. And finally, since it is my 29th birthday, I wanted to write a little bit about the perception of being “old” in your late twenties and how that’s a form of conservative psychic warfare against women and girls in particular.